‘Kerry,’ said Uncle Richard. ‘Come away back here please, bub.’
Come away back. What am I, a sheepdog? She hesitated, not done yet with Ken and his gammon Big Man act. Then saw with horror that Steve was about to venture out and rescue her, like all she needed was another fucking hero.
‘Shoot Buckley and we’ll all pay, bruz,’ she repeated over her shoulder as she walked back to the others. Steve fell on her, dragged her away. Joined with Pretty Mary: what the fuck were you. Do you think you’re bloody. Don’t you ever dare.
‘I’m tired of being shit on!’ Ken shouted. ‘If nothing changes, nothing fucking changes.’
‘Steve,’ said Uncle Richard, his voice still easy but his gaze locked on the rifle. ‘I want you to take the women and Donny and go next door. Chris, you stay.’ Uncle Richard gently shoved Donny sideways to Steve. Nodded at Neil’s F100 next door. Get in and clear out, he meant.
‘Got it,’ said Steve. ‘Should I call—’
‘Don’t do anything. Don’t call anyone,’ said Uncle Richard. ‘Just go.’
‘I’m not leaving till he’s put that bloody gun down,’ said Kerry. She was steaming about Elvis, poor Donny, the smouldering house. Donna. The island, fast slipping away into history as the family turned on each other. The whole stupid bullshit of life this side of the border. But ah, Jesus. Her Uncle was right, and this unholy mess belonged to them all.
‘You’ll go and you’ll go now,’ said Uncle Richard to Kerry, all his softness vanished in an instant. Stung, Kerry shrugged Steve off. I’m not a child. When Uncle’s back was turned she peeled away, stomped under the house. Squinted through the cracks in the scorched wooden battens, waiting to see who got shot first.
When Steve had taken the women and children next door, Uncle Richard and Chris glanced at each other and did a surprising thing, both of them sinking down in the middle of the lawn with no words needed. The two of them folded cross-legged onto the dirt as though choreographed, as though some magnetic force had drawn them earthward a dozen steps away from Ken. Uncle Richard slowly opened his palm above the burnt grass. Ken didn’t accept the invitation. He remained standing, the rifle dangling now in his right hand, the barrel parallel to the ground. My big brother, the human compass. Which way will he swing? Where exactly is true north?
‘I know ya wanna shoot him, nephew. But the word on the street is Jim Buckley’s gonna get what’s coming to him soon enough,’ Kerry heard Uncle Richard say. ‘ICAC is very bloody interested in his dealings. It’s the big boys in Sydney, and it’s not going away this time.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard that before,’ Ken argued. ‘He’s protected.’
More talk followed, indistinct and low. Squatting on her haunches, Kerry shuffled closer until she was in the spot Elvis had inhabited for most of the party. His steel chain was still tangled around the concrete house stump. The empty clip on the end of it a terrible sorrow.
Talk from the men about Donna, mutterings that she couldn’t make out. Ken yelling again, pacing, throwing the rifle around. He looked like a lunatic. If Steve had stupidly called the cops that’d be it. No other excuse needed: bang bang bang!
Oh my God, they killed Kenny.
Kerry found that her teeth were clenched. Her jaw was granite. There was no way for this to end well. She peered through the wooden slats at the three men.
‘—lying through her hole exactly like she did twenty years ago!’ Ken was shouting. ‘And you believe her! You of all people, Uncle. Why?’ His right arm straight down, his fist clenched beside his knee, rigid. The gun horizontal against it. Seen in silhouette from where Kerry crouched, a crucifix. Or a cross-hair.
‘I want you to put the rifle down, Ken.’
‘This rifle stays right the fuck where it is.’
‘Okay. Okay. My nephew, you need to listen to me now. I love you, you know that. That’s never gonna change. And you’re right. I do believe Donna,’ Uncle Richard said heavily, waiting for Ken to lift the rifle and fire. Because God only knows. He took a big breath. ‘I believe her because I’ve got good reason to, Kenny. And I reckon you do too. It wasn’t your fault, son.’
Ken’s face spasmed, became unrecognisable. He turned and bellowed at the thin spirals of smoke rising from the ruined house. Put the weapon to his shoulder and pulled the trigger, shot at the smoke haze, at the chicken coop, at the white thumbprint of the moon sitting above the western range. The shots echoed off the mountain, sounding like a whip cracking across the distant pasture. He reloaded, and fired again and again. Then finally stood, heaving for breath, still looking like murder.
‘Pop Owen,’ Uncle Richard said quietly. ‘Cold comfort, or maybe none at all. But terrible things happened in his life. Things that warped him, Ken. He never talked about it much, it’s easier to drink than talk. But he was hurt bad. Not a couple times. Again and again and again. Being taken away, never really knowing his family, the shame of that. Then the mish, O’Sullivan, and all the rest of the scum that the church protected. The station, too. He lost his eye, lost his dream. Some of that pain had to go somewhere. There’s no shame to you in it, my nephew. It wasn’t your fault. Not Donna’s fault either. You were the innocents in it all.’
Ah, Christ, thought Kerry, swept by a tide of wild knowledge.
‘I love you, my nephew. We all do. And we can get through this. Just put the gun down, now.’
Ken swayed where he stood, his mouth opening and closing. Every thought but one left him. He upended the rifle where he stood, turned himself into the Unknown Soldier. For a long moment he didn’t move. Then, quivering, he sank slowly down onto his good knee. Leaned forward over the barrel, his head bowed, his body shaking.
Uncle Richard and Chris lifted from the ground like eagles. Chris sprinted, slid in to kick the rifle away from beneath Ken’s chin, sending the weapon whirling into the cloud of dust and ash he had just raised. Uncle Richard arrived a moment later and enveloped Ken in a bear hug until he crumpled, put his hands over his face, began to sob. And beneath the charred and broken house, in the dusty yellow light streaming through the bars of the battens, Kerry suddenly realised that her own face, too, was awash with tears.
Chapter Nineteen
Uncle Richard sat at the wheel of his rattling HiLux, Ken stitched and bandaged beside him. Kerry and Steve stood on the grass with Pretty Mary, both of them still filthy from the day’s burning, dragging, dumping and sweeping.
‘You be right till Tuesday, my sister?’ Uncle Richard said. Pretty Mary made a face and gestured at the house with her wine glass.
‘Be a lot better if you mens was gonna stay and fix this,’ she said acidly. In vino veritas, thought Kerry.
‘That’s sorted,’ Uncle Richard said, putting the ute into gear. ‘Black Superman and Josh are on it.’ The volume of the rattling went up several notches. ‘Sure you won’t come?’ he asked Uncle Neil, who shook his head, dubious on Salters since hearing about Ken and the rifle. Uncle Neil had taken the rebel flag off his ute, but still. Sixty years a white man. A bloke had every right to stop and think. Maybe he wasn’t pure white, but he didn’t feel like much of a blackfella, either.
‘Gotta work, mate. And find Mary a new set of stringers.’
‘Next time then, brother.’ A handshake, a man’s short nod.
Just then Black Superman and Josh drove in.
‘We better get cracking first thing,’ said Josh. ‘Lots to get at Bunnings by the look. Couple days to fix the kitchen up and fit the new stairs. Veranda’s gonna hafta wait.’
Uncle Richard climbed stiffly out of the HiLux, hugged Black Superman, the kids, Josh too. Shook Brandon’s hand and told him he’d heard all about him protecting his sister, good ways.
‘Who done it?’ breathed Brandon, his big eyes swelling at the house.
‘We don’t know yet,’ lied Black Superman. ‘C’mon, shift ya stumps, we gotta go to Bunnings.
’
‘But whose fault was it?’ Brandon insisted, removing three lollipops from his mouth for clarity.
‘There isn’t always someone to blame, bud,’ Black Superman told him. ‘Sometimes things just happen. You move on.’
Brandon put the lollipops back in and looked sceptical. Nobody was ever blameless in the world he’d come from.
‘Nan, promise you won’t bury him till we’re back,’ said Donny’s blond head, popping out from among the eskies and swags. For the corpse of Elvis had been found, not even scorched, beneath the charred remains of Ken’s old surfboard.
Pretty Mary grimaced. ‘E’s gonna be proper ripe by Tuesday, son.’
Uncle Neil came to the rescue. ‘Use my fishing freezer. You’re staying next door anyway, more the merrier.’
‘Oh! I nearly forgot.’ Steve went over to a pile of burnt wood and shuffled around in the ashes. Picked something out and rubbed most of the muck off it before folding it in a rag and giving it to Pretty Mary, who held it out to her brother.
Uncle Richard squinted beneath the rag at the kingplate. Sucked his teeth in alarm.
‘You bring it when we bury old mate, Mary, and we’ll put it back where it belongs. Far too dangerous to be just hanging around. Probably got a lot to do with this,’ he pointed at the house with his lips. Then he dropped his voice. ‘And don’t let Steve touch it again. It’s not for dugais.’ He handed it back, and revved the ute loudly. ‘Right, let’s yanbillilla, now. This camp ain’t gonna run itself.’
When the sounds of the HiLux rattling and backfiring had faded away to silence, Pretty Mary stood in front of the shack, arms folded, wine glass cold against her left shoulder. Black Superman put an arm around her waist.
‘We’ll fix it up for ya, Mum, don’t worry. Be good as new,’ said Josh. ‘Better.’
Pretty Mary wrinkled her nose.
‘Bloody old dump,’ she told him airily. ‘It coulda burned to the ground for all I blooming well care.’
‘Darnt, don’t be like that,’ Black Superman chipped her.
‘I still got me teepee, and I still got me cards.’ She slapped her vinyl handbag triumphantly with her free hand, for the tarot – at first thought lost along with the kitchen table – had fortuitously been brought downstairs earlier in the night by Aunty Tall Mary.
Upon discovering this, Pretty Mary had promptly hurled away the Miracle Healing Meetings flyer that she had stashed in her bra. ‘That’s all a black woman really needs, somewhere to camp, and a way to feed herself.’ A large part of Pretty Mary meant it. One version of her wished aloud that the house had burned to ashes, washing away the ugliness of its history. Maybe if the shack were destroyed she’d be able to put away that awful scene in the kitchen, forget the terrible words that had been uttered about Pop. Maybe then she could have lost the memory of Tall Mary’s hand raised high in the air before it came crashing down onto Donna’s face. A benediction straight from Father O’Sullivan, delivered decades after his death by one of the two dozen Marys he had insisted on naming for the Blessed Virgin.
~
‘Come crank out ten kays,’ said Steve, lacing on his runners on Monday afternoon. ‘You’ll feel better.’ Spreadeagled on the futon, Kerry closed her eyes in silent protest. Oh. My. Lord. This fella, truesgod. No matter what mad shit went down, the Energizer Bunny always wanted to go another round, but she most certainly did not.
For Kerry was wrung out, spiralling downward. All she wanted to do was stay in bed. She had grown progressively slacker as the weekend wore on, trying and failing to make some inner sense of her family’s story. In contrast, Steve’s enthusiasm had surged higher and higher. Nothing blokes liked more than a project. Working alongside Black Superman and Josh, Steve had the rubbish dumped by teatime Saturday; the new front wall was already built, and as soon as Uncle Neil brought home the used stairs he’d scavenged from a building site in Lismore, the house would be almost back to its old self. If only people were as easy to renovate, Kerry thought.
‘Pass. Bring back a packet of Tim Tams,’ she said, returning to Facebook, where she learned that Allie’s cousin Pryce had just been selected by an American college basketball team. There would be some wild partying in Logan tonight. But she was too exhausted to party. Too tired, too sad and too broke. The Salters had discovered that afternoon that the Land and Environment Court had denied their appeal. Now Kerry’s mind flashed back to a recurring picture: one of roaring yellow bulldozers smashing through the bush beside the river, destroying the big gums and ripping the earth to shreds beneath their sharp tracks. Pictures she had until today flat out refused to allow into her brain.
‘Up the ridge and back, then.’
‘You deaf? If ya got no Tim Tams then leave me be, fuck ya.’
‘Lazy sod,’ Steve accused, hands on his hips at the end of the bed. He prodded the sole of her foot with his big toe. Tap, tap. Tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Pause. Tap. Kerry felt like jumping up and decking him, onetime.
‘I thought you wanted to do the Mullum fun run.’
‘I’m not lazy, ya maggot. I’m in mourning.’
Steve tapped some more, knowing she was about to cave.
Kerry eyed him and felt a faint stirring of lust. Check it out. Standing there all muscly and shit with his shirt off. She groaned. Maybe a run would help her to shift this depression. Help her to think more clearly, too, about Buckley, what to do with the disaster that had been delivered to them by the useless arseholes of the Land and Environment Court. She rolled out of bed to get dressed.
‘Just as well you’re good looking, cunt,’ she told him, brushing her hair and tying it back.
‘I’m so hot I piss napalm, baby.’ Steve struck a laughing pose in the gym’s huge mirrors. Kerry blew a loud raspberry at him, and ran downstairs.
‘It’s funny cos it’s true!’ Steve called down after her.
They matched their pace on the road up to the ridge overlooking Patto, Steve running a touch slower than usual, Kerry pushing herself that little bit harder. Your body can nearly always do more than your brain thinks it can, Steve had shown her. Don’t anticipate the pain of training before it arrives. Work with the reality of now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy for you. You’re not the one bleeding, with a bloated gut and mad chocolate cravings. And anyway, the reality of now is shit, boyfriend. The reality of now is living in a crappy small town where the same corrupt murdering bastards have run things for a hundred years, and if ya don’t love it, you’re free to leave.
Kerry eventually settled into a rhythm: pace, pace, breath in. Pace, pace, breath out. The running was hypnotic, allowing her to shake off the whirling thoughts of the birthday party, of Pop, of the danger to Granny’s island. While they ran past one kilometre of cane after another, climbing steadily onto one of the spurs coming off the distant range, she wasn’t stressing about Pretty Mary. Wasn’t bereft about losing Elvis to a gun-toting maniac. She wasn’t worrying about the possibility of Ken finding himself another rifle to wave around like a fucking idiot, nor agonising over the chances (slim to none) of Uncle Richard working some miracle on her brother at Men’s Camp. Yeah, right. Bunch of blokes out in the scrub telling each other how fucking wonderful they all are, and how hard done by. Steve thought it was deadly of course, but then he would. He was forever talking about young guys, what they needed, how to help them grow. They need older blokes to help turn them into men, he argued when Kerry challenged him. Well they ain’t gonna turn into fucking washing machines, are they, she’d retorted. There’s nothing ever said about young girls, what they’re missing out on, what they need. Always the same old story – the squeaky, violent wheel gets the oil, and the others just get on with it.
When they reached the small park at the top of the spur, Kerry signalled she needed a rest. Her legs burned, and there was nothing around to quench her thirst. She popped a flat pebble in her mouth and wai
ted for the stitch in her side to ease. To her irritation, Steve cranked out twenty fast burpees and then began doing pull-ups on the cross-bar of a nearby picnic shelter. Fuck me. Does this bloke ever stop? For even five minutes? She staggered away from him, looked at the country instead, while her wind returned. North was Durrongo, where there were no ominous plumes of black smoke this time. Just cattle country stretching away in all directions, the setting sun glinting on the distant silver ribbon that held Durrongo in its watery embrace. Miniature cars making their way along the highway to the east, Brisbane- or Sydney-bound. A few of them turning their lights on as dusk arrived. I could just jog home now, Kerry told herself, and point the Harley at Queensland, and kiss all this drama goodbye. Then paused, realising she’d used the word ‘home’ to describe the gym in Patterson.
‘You okay?’ Steve wandered over.
‘Yeah.’
‘There’s Wollumbin way over the back. But is that Mount Monk?’ Steve asked, pointing at another smaller peak rising from the same range. The perfect circle of the full moon was suspended above it.
Kerry laughed in disbelief. ‘For real?’
‘I’ll take that as a no. But what’s that look for?’
‘What look?’
‘That “I love you but you sure do drive me up the wall” look.’
‘Well, as if Mount Chincogan looks anything like Mount Monk! How did white people even find Australia?’ She shook her head. ‘Captain Cook musta bin looking for Canada. Or China.’
‘China’s not all that far,’ Steve retorted. ‘And how about not putting shit on me every single minute of every single day?’
Kerry blew another loud raspberry.
‘Not far? In a little wooden boat? Good go! And you wanna be with a blackfella, ya gonna hear stuff you’re not used to, sunshine. Cultural deprogramming. Ya should be paying me.’
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